Each week in OSV Newsweekly, Carl Olson provides a thoughtful, relevant reflection on the Mass readings for Sunday in his "Opening the Word" column. The following is just an excerpt, but you can read the entire column here.

From Carl Olson:

In the beatitudes (Mt 5:1-12), Jesus proclaimed, in authoritative fashion, the new law of the New Covenant. By going into the wilderness and up on a mountain, Jesus presented himself as the new Moses. But he was not just a new prophet, as Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis points out, “but God himself, who inscribes the Law of his Sacred Heart no longer now on stone tablets but on the very hearts of men.”

FEB. 9, 2014
FIFTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

IS 58:7-10
PS 112:4-5, 6-7, 8-9
1 COR 2:1-5
MT 5:13-16

The Sermon on the Mount can also be described as instruction in discipleship. And what is the essence of discipleship? Sacrificial love — the gift of one’s self for the greatest good, God, and the good of others.

“This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (Jn 13:34-35). In today’s Gospel reading, the disciples are likened to — or, better, actually described as — three things: salt, light and a city.